Groovy Green Goddess: Health Matters

With the New Year upon us, it isn’t surprising that many of us have resolutions to lose weight, to exercise more, to work less, to make more, and on and on and on. Most of the time our resolutions we make tend to lead to disappointment. We usually set ourselves up for failure. Anyway, that is how I have experienced making resolutions in the past. I have also witnessed others being incredibly hard on themselves to the point they end up leaning clear to the other side of the scale when following their well meaning resolutions. By doing this, we see ourselves as a double failure. Well I am here to tell you to “Stop that!” Yeah! I get it. It’s easier said than done sometimes. That is why I haven’t made any resolutions for several years. Sure I do vision boards, or look over my goals from last year and see which ones I never completed. You know, the ones that were never brought to fruition. I then ask myself whether it’s still important to me to focus on or if I should put it on the back burner for later or whether I totally take it off the table and throw it in the garbage. It’s okay to do this. Sometimes it’s important we try something out in order to figure out it isn’t really what we are meant to do. Many times this ‘failed’ attempt at our resolutions are really not a fail at all but actually a learning opportunity. Maybe that learning opportunity is simply to teach us to love ourselves unconditionally. If you must make a resolution or set a goal. Keep it simple. For example, if you decide you are going to exercise more this year, and you haven’t exercised for a while, take baby steps. If your regular routine is to walk from your car to the grocery store, park at the back of the parking lot. If you want to incorporate yoga into your routine, sign up for one time a week. By taking baby steps in our activities we are more apt to stick with it and make it part of our regular routine. When we decide we are going to go to yoga every day or even three times a week, ask yourself if this is something you will be able to continue in the long term. Our goal is to incorporate our changes we want to make into our routine in an easy way. Then once we have that new way firmly put into our routine then we can adjust more or less according to our needs. So be gentle as you start out this New Year! Baby Steps will get you farther than you can imagine!